


The Prince & the Pawn

by JazzRaft



Series: Dark at Night [16]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 23:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9685958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: A death in the glaive forces Nyx to look at his relationship with Noctis through a new lens. Noctis does not see it the same way.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156245266142/morulsa-said-i-am-fan-of-noctnyx-and-on-your) for #4 in [this prompt post.](http://jazzraft.tumblr.com/post/156180067603/send-me-two-characters-or-more-and-a-prompt-and)

“…We’re designed to be disposable.”

Crowe had been talking for a while, arms cycling wildly to punctuate every word, eyes red with tears she was trying so hard not to shed. Nyx just let her. They all had different ways of coping with the loss of one of their brothers. Lately, it had been happening too often though, and Crowe’s façade of calm finally cracked. By the end, she was drained, breathing heavy, no longer blind with rage at a system that had raised them to be slaughtered.

She was quiet for a moment before glancing over Nyx’s shoulder. Her expression changed, caught between resentment and something else. A kind of knowing. Nyx followed her gaze, feeling a heavy weight sink down onto his shoulders when he saw Noctis standing in the archway. Nyx glanced at Crowe, entreating with her. She’d done her screaming though. She had none left for Noctis, not that it was his fault anyway. She squeezed Nyx’s shoulder and walked off, dragging her arm across her face as she went.

“You shouldn’t be down here,” Nyx said into the silence that followed her retreating footsteps.

Noctis stepped tentatively into the room, a big open space where the glaives gathered to train… when they weren’t mourning. “I heard that there were a lot of casualties… I was afraid one of them might be you.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t.”

The gruffness of the words added to the weight on Nyx. The stung silence from Noctis added even more. It was a long, painful moment before either of them said anything.

“She’s wrong…” Noctis said, voice small. “You’re not disposable.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you ever went out there.”

On the battlefield, the glaive were pawns. Sacrificial pieces in a far greater game. A wall of dead bodies to protect the King. The kingsglaive had always been a trap. You were spared from starvation and poverty only to be slain for the whims of your sovereign. The funniest thing about it all was that you volunteered for it. You asked to be killed for something you only half believed in. What a joke.

Noctis tried to reach out to him, but Nyx wouldn’t let him, brushing off the gentle touch he’d always welcomed with a harsh shrug. Noctis shrunk back, eyes turning to the dirty floor, searching it for some way to comfort Nyx. It wasn’t comfort Nyx wanted though. He wanted change. He wanted to be selfish. He wanted something he could rely on, something worth dying for, and he just didn’t know if the Crown was worth it.

A more logical, less emotionally compromised part of him said that in maybe a week or a month or however long it took him to process his grief for his fallen comrades, he wouldn’t be thinking any of this. He’d carry out the King’s orders because he owed him for his job and his powers and everything. He’d remember that the Crown he so loathed right now had given him Noctis, and that just him by himself would be worth dying for. But he didn’t think of that now. He thought of ending up like the men they’d brought back from the fight today. He thought of what a waste their lives had been. He thought of their families, their loved ones, crying over their cold corpses. He thought that he never wanted Noctis to feel like that for him.

“I can’t see you anymore.”

The room went cold. The color leeched from Noctis’s face. It made his eyes bright and electric beneath the shadows of his hair.

“You’re just saying that because you’re…”

“Crowe’s right. We’re disposable. And you’re invaluable. I’m gonna die out there one day, and it’s gonna destroy you. I can’t be the reason Lucis inherits a broken king.”

Noctis flinched at the end of every sentence, as if it were his fist lashing across his face and not just words. Every syllable seemed to make him smaller, bruised him and bled him until there was nothing left inside to hurt him. It made the muscles in Nyx’s neck pull taut.

“Y-You’re just…” Noctis tried to say, voice as thin as paper.

“I’m not.”

Noctis stared across at him, expression uncomprehending. It was never gonna last anyway, Nyx told himself in the silence. We could only make it work for so long. Lots of people say “I love you.” It wasn’t always enough to keep them together. Nyx didn’t believe any of it, and neither did Noctis.

Suddenly, the prince got angry. The vacant look of distress on his face twisted, the whites of his eyes shining and his teeth clenching. He flickered into a blue phantom and warped the distance between them, shoving at Nyx’s chest and making him stumble back.

“I’m sorry your friends are dead, alright?” Noctis screamed at him. “I’m sorry this war has gone on for so long, I’m sorry its cost everyone so damn much, I’m sorry that we’ve tried to fight because we wanted to be free, and I’m sorry if you don’t fucking agree with that! But you don’t get to run away from me. Not using any of that as an excuse.”

“This isn’t running, Noct,” he growled.

“The fuck it isn’t!” Noctis pushed him again. “Bad things happen. I’m sorry that they do. That doesn’t give you the right to throw away all the good things just because you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared, I’m just trying to be realistic…”

“Since when? Since it’s suddenly convenient for you? Nothing about us has ever been realistic, but we’ve made it work so far. Why now do you have to suddenly decide that being ‘realistic’ is more important than being with me?”

Nyx couldn’t bring his gaze up to look at him, watching the ground beneath his boots, looking for a way to make Noctis hear him. It was hard to find when he didn’t really want to see it. He didn’t want this, of course he didn’t. He didn’t want to leave him, he didn’t want to stop seeing him every day, kissing him every night, saying he loved him in the rare moments when it was most worth saying. But he didn’t want to not come home one day. He didn’t want to think of Noctis standing in the throne room at his father’s side, listening to Drautos list the names of the fallen, and have to pretend that his world hadn’t just been completely obliterated when the Commander said “Nyx Ulric.”

Noctis put his hands on his arms, fingers tight in the fabric of his uniform, trying to find his eyes from where Nyx was so adamantly avoiding his. “I know you’re hurting,” Noctis croaked, all of the rage deflating out of him as quickly as it came. “I just want to help.”

“You can’t.”

Nyx looked up at him then, knowing that he shouldn’t. Because if he saw those eyes, so luminous and blue and innocent and everything to him, he knew he’d never leave him. Even if it was better that he did, even if it meant breaking his heart one day, once he looked into those eyes and let them give him the peace he’d been searching years for, he was his forever. But he did look. And he was his.

Noctis stepped close and pulled him into his arms, taking his head down to his shoulder. “Please let me try,” he said. And Nyx supposed that was all any of them could really do in this life. Nothing was certain, but they could try to make something of the uncertainty.

He held Noctis back and slumped into him, so tired of fighting and never knowing what for. Noctis was his answer.


End file.
